Discovery (Science of Psionics Book #1) (14 page)

Pushing out was the difficult part and
getting harder as I went farther afield, but once I stopped, I
could watch anything inside my bubble with ease. I would glance
down at the computer screen once in a while, but with the crappy
light outside, I felt that my new ‘
mental cam
’ would be far
more effective.

I concentrated and expanded my awareness
bubble again. There’s the road. That’s the fencepost on the far
side of the lot. I managed to get the whole yard covered, and part
of the forest where it was closest to the house before I had to
stop again. I had gotten my bubble out to about a hundred yards,
and had to really strain to hold it. After a moment or two when I
thought it would collapse, it began settling in to where I could
control it without effort.

I mopped my brow and relaxed muscles that had
gone tense without my noticing. I had hoped that I could have
pushed farther, but was still happy with how far I had gotten. A
hundred yard perimeter was nothing to sneeze at. I was pleased to
discover that not only did the bubble become easier to monitor, but
the details also became clearer as it settled in more.

I chuckled as I realized a more mundane
application for this new ability. I would never again have to worry
about stubbing my toe if I got up in the middle of the night.

I saw that Sara had lain down in the garage
and Linda was making her way back toward me. “
Everything all set
in there?
” I sent.

“
She seems satisfied. I made some holes in
the overhead door for her, moved some junk next to it for cover,
and built her a shield
.”

“
I’ve gotten a surveillance field set up
around the house. It took a bit of work, but I think it’ll be much
more effective than the cameras. Carl can get some sleep if he
wants. His watch is a bit redundant now
.”

“
Interesting
,” she replied after I
finished my explanation. “
I never thought to use it passive like
that. Let me try it. If this siege goes on for long, then we’ll
have to watch in shifts
.”

While Linda experimented with a bubble of her
own, I turned my attention back to mine and gave things a quick
scan. I could sort of watch everything at once, but if I
concentrated on a certain area, the details became far clearer.
With surveillance like this, there was no longer a need to sit in
the office.

“
Let’s all move to the hallway by the
garage door
,” I sent. “
It’ll be safer there and we can all
be close enough to talk without shouting
.”

“
Ok
,” I heard with an odd echo.

We gathered up our nesting material and
hauled it over to the side door. As we rounded the corner, I saw
that Carl was already gathering up his own pile.

“Convenient,” I told him. “We’re moving to
the hallway by the garage where it’ll be safer from random
bullets.”

“I heard ya, gimme a minute. I can’t move as
fast as normal right now.”

Linda and I exchanged a puzzled glance. “What
do you mean you heard me? I didn’t say it out loud.”

“Of course you did. You said that my watch
was redundant, I could sleep if I wanted to, and then you decided
that we should gather closer to Sara near the garage.”

“You heard that?” I said incredulously.
“
What about this? Can you still hear me?
”

“Of course I can still hear you, I’m not deaf
you blithering …” He paused, startled. “Holy shit, you never said
that out loud!”

“I’m not sure why you can suddenly hear me
now, but I’m glad. Every little thing helps to even the odds for
us. Welcome to the club, eh!”

Linda: Gathering Intelligence

The boys were enthusiastic in their
discussion of Carl’s newfound ability as we set up our stuff in the
hallway. Sara seemed very envious of Carl and looked like she
wanted to join us, but was reluctant to leave her post. They kept
the conversation verbal since Carl hadn’t figured out how to
send
yet and also to keep Sara from feeling left out.

It was easy to tell when Carl was attempting
to send, since that was the only time he would shut up. I could
understand his enthusiasm and excitement, but that didn’t mean that
I enjoyed his incessant babbling. I decided that I needed a little
break from him before it turned me cross, so I fixed up some ham
sandwiches for everyone. I left the boys with their share and took
mine into the garage with Sara’s.

“Thanks,” Sara said before taking a big bite.
“We needed something in our guts other than the battery acid that
Mark calls coffee.”

“Any luck spotting them yet?” I asked, taking
a bite from my own sandwich.

“Not yet. It’s like a needle in a haystack
right now.”

“Is there anything that we can do to
help?”

She thought for a long moment before
replying. “Maybe there is. Look for a small beige box inside my
duffle. Inside are a compass and a protractor. Find some string and
make a line from the bullet hole in a window to the impact point on
the floor. Use the compass and protractor to get the direction and
angle of elevation of each shot. If you can match up the right
holes and get me a good measurement, then that’ll be a big help
narrowing down my search area.”

“I think I can manage that. Is there anything
else I can do?”

“Yeah, don’t get shot. You can also bring me
another sandwich.”

“Here, you can have my second one. I would
rather keep busy than choke it down.”

Accepting my offering absently, she turned
back to her scope and resumed scanning the hillside in between
bites. I grabbed the beige box from her duffel and a ball of binder
twine from the garage shelf. I made my way past the boys in the
hallway where they were still going at it, and decided that the
living room might be the best place to start.

I
hung
one end of the string at the
first bullet hole and unrolled it through the air back toward me.
There were several bullet holes in my nice hardwood floor and it
wasn’t very easy matching them up. I struggled with it for a while
and finally just had to guess. I moved on to the office, hoping
that there might be an easier match in there.

I was a little bit more confident with my
pairings in there, but decided to check my bedroom in order to be
thorough. Once finished, I stood in the doorway and looked out at
the string lines in the living room. There was definitely a
pattern, and I could see where the most dangerous places were.

Taking my notes back to Sara I almost laughed
out loud at Carl, sitting in the hall and straining to use his
telepathy. It looked like he was constipated.

“Here ya go,” I said to Sara, waving my notes
as I entered the garage.

“That was quick.”

“Well, you might say that I’ve got a bit of
an advantage. I should tell you though, that I’m not quite sure on
the pairings from the living room.”

Sara studied my notes for several long
minutes before replying, “I think you’re right, some of these look
a little strange. Let’s go check it out.”

Sara gave Carl an odd look as we passed them
in the hallway. When we reached the living room she whispered to me
“Why does Carl look like he’s trying to take a dump on your
floor?”

I giggled, “I think he’s trying to
send
something to Mark. Ever since he heard our mental
comments, he’s been obsessed with figuring it out.”

“I can’t blame him,” she wistfully replied.
Turning back to the task at hand she studied the string paths for
several minutes, often getting down on the floor and putting her
eye right next to a hole.

“No, no, no … this one goes here, and that
one goes there.” She finally said, pointing out my error.

Nodding, I quickly moved the offending
strings to the new locations and took the measurements again. Once
I was finished, Sara took her own measurements and checked them
against mine.

“Looks perfect now,” she said happily. “I’ll
need to do some figuring with these now. Do you have a
calculator?”

“I’ll find something for you.”

As Sara made her way back to the garage, I
tried to think of where my old pocket calculator would be. Rather
than waste time, I decided that the laptop would probably be best,
especially since the garage was so dark. I set it up for her and
then stepped back to the hallway door so as to not disturb her.

For the next hour she worked on her
calculations, occasionally mumbling about stuff like ‘wind speed’
or ‘inclination’. I wasn’t quite sure if she was getting anywhere,
but at least she was doing something. I felt a bit useless, and I
had to admit to myself that I didn’t like the feeling. Sara was
searching for our assailants, Carl learned how to use one of our
abilities, and Mark figured out how to keep watch efficiently. All
I did was make some food and play with a ball of string.

“Think girl, think,” I mumbled to myself.
Suddenly it hit me. About six months ago, a truck driver took a
wrong turn and ended up at my dead end road. While he was trying to
turn his rig around, he took out two sections of my fence as he
backed into the driveway. He never stopped after he did the damage,
but I saw what he did and managed to snap a pic of his truck with
my phone camera before he drove away. The sheriff who came out to
investigate my complaint sent the pic from my phone to his as
evidence. His number should still be in my phones memory!

The phone service was out, but if I queued up
a text message then it might go through whenever Sid turned it on
to send us something. Excited, I quickly grabbed my phone and began
thumbing through my history. Yes, it was still there. I composed my
thoughts for a moment and began typing.

911 SOMEONE SHOOTING AT US NEED HELP
ASAP

I added my name and address to the message
and sent it. Thinking for a moment, I queued up another one to let
him know that phone service was sporadic. Feeling better, I went to
tell the others what I did. The boys thought it was a brilliant
idea. They talked about it enthusiastically for a whole five
minutes before going back to their telepathy discussion.

Bored with their discussion that was going
nowhere, I went to see if Sara needed anything else. She seemed to
be concentrating on her scope fully now so I quietly sat and
waited, not wanting to disturb her. About fifteen minutes later,
she sat back, rubbed her eyes and jotted down some notes on the
laptop.

“I think I’ve identified and located two
separate firing positions,” she began. “I can also make a pretty
good guess on some of what we’re facing now too.”

“One sec,” I said. “
Mark, Sara has some
new information that you two should probably hear
.”

“
Coming, dear
.”

They came into the garage, Mark grabbing a
couple of my old lawn chairs off the shelf for them. He never
offered me one, but I didn’t want to interrupt things. Once they
settled, Sara began.

“Ok, here’s what I know and what I can guess.
First off, I’ve located two firing positions. They’re far enough
apart that I doubt that Sid is going back and forth, so there’s at
least two teams out there. The sniper positions at each are based
around a short horizontal log, with minimal proper camouflage,
which tells me that Sid isn’t at either position and neither is any
ranger.”

She took a swig of her coffee, grimacing at
the taste before continuing. “With the two positions set up to a
standard below what Sid would accept, then that means that he’s at
a third location and giving orders through someone else. In other
words, he’s telling someone
what
, and leaving the
how
up to them. To me, that most likely means that there’s at least one
squad of troops split into two fire teams and probably getting
their orders through a staff sergeant.”

“What did he do, bring in the whole damned
army?” Carl asked.

“No, not the whole army,” Sara snorted. “But
we’re looking at a minimum of nine people split up between four
positions.”

“Four?” Mark queried. “You only mentioned
three spots.”

“He’s got someone at the cell tower
controlling it. I didn’t think that I had to mention that one since
it’s obvious that he’s controlling the signal. I suppose it’s
possible that his command post is set up there, but I doubt it.
It’s too far away from the action, so to speak.”

“That’s some pretty impressive deduction,
Sherlock. Scary too, if there’s really that many people out there
after us,” Carl commented.

“That’s just the minimum actually. I pegged
two fire teams on the same hillside, but that doesn’t mean there
isn’t more. Anyone with half a brain wouldn’t put all their forces
on just one side of us if they have a choice, so it’s highly
probable that there are other teams in position on the other side
of us. That would be either troops split off from the two fire
teams, or a second squad which would bring our assailants strength
up to seventeen.”

“Wow,” I said in awe. “Could he really have
brought so many people against us?”

“Yes, I’m afraid that he really could have.
Now, everyone stay away from the windows and doors for a while.
It’ll be dawn soon, and we’re about due for another round of
attacks. Only this time, I think I’ll get a little payback. Nobody
shoots at me and gets away with it.”

As if on cue, I felt bullets hit the shield
in the office, bringing it down. There wasn’t enough glass left to
break in that window. “Shots in the office,” I reported.

“Hit in the master bedroom also. I’m
rebuilding the shield as we speak,” Mark summarized.

With all of us avoiding the rooms taking
fire, I had planned to just abandon the shields. After thinking
about it for a moment, I started rebuilding the shield so that
things would appear to be the same in case anyone was paying
attention. With the attack over, we reconvened in the garage to
discuss things.